


if I, catch fire then I change my aim // throw my troubles at the pearly gates

by SargeantWoof



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Death, Character Study, Gen, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:29:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28750737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SargeantWoof/pseuds/SargeantWoof
Summary: The name Black, the family name, carried by generations of purebloods through wars and peace, through cultural shifts and faltering families, was withering.The seed which had once sprouted hundreds of witches and wizards was fading into obscurity, fading into the void.Regulus knew, he knew, what was at stake. He knew how it would (most likely) end.He did it anyway.
Relationships: Regulus Black & Sirius Black
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	if I, catch fire then I change my aim // throw my troubles at the pearly gates

The name Black, the family name, carried by generations of purebloods through wars and peace, through cultural shifts and faltering families, was withering.

The seed which had once sprouted hundreds of witches and wizards was fading into obscurity, fading into the void.

Regulus knew, he knew, what was at stake. He knew how it would (most likely) end.

He did it anyway.

+++

There was a point in his life, so early in his memory that it was more haze than clarity, more emotion than actuality, where he could remember the sting of a hex from his mother's wand, followed by Sirius' loud voice, and a warm hand clasped in his, drawing him from the library to his room.

He knew nothing that happened after, knew nothing of Sirius' bloodied hands, knuckles raw from their mother's brutality, or his weeks of punishments that would follow, but he knew, as soon as their hands clasped, that he was safe.

When he died, he died with the warmth of Sirius' hands tucked tight in his.

+++

He watched with cool eyes as Bellatrix attempted to court the Dark Lord's favor, her actions growing more and more deranged as he simply watched her.

He held back a sigh as her wand slashed downwards again, the muggle in front of her screaming.

It was... distasteful to say the least.

He glanced across the Malfoy's ballroom, taking in Severus and Lucius across the way, the muted signs of disgust obvious in Severus' body language.

Their eyes met and his body shifted upright, the haughtiness of a Death Eater settling against Severus' shoulders as it had always been there.

Regulus didn't move anything beyond an arched brow but took in the change, marking it down behind fortified occlumency shields.

Severus could play the game well, Regulus knew, but he wasn't a Black, wasn't a pureblood. He hadn't been raised under the hands of a family who made it clear that he was their only hope.

Regulus turned back toward the muggle and the Dark Lord, his thoughts spinning, steadily moving towards a decision.

Dare he try to take on the Dark Lord?

He wasn't sure yet.

+++

When he was in his third year at Hogwarts, he accidentally befriended a mudblood.

Not a loud one, like that Lily Evans, but a quiet one in Hufflepuff who clung to shadowed corners and whispered correct answers under her breath.

They would meet in the library, in the far back North-East corner, by the dusty periodicals dating back to the early 1700's.

He hadn't meant to befriend her - she had been sitting alone when he had stomped by, eagerly escaping the taunting voices of his brother and his friends.

She had peeked up at him, taken in his face, and shoved her books to the side, making a space for him at the end of the table. He had eyed her, before settling in hesitantly, only wrinkling his nose at her a few times.

They didn't speak.

+++

They didn't talk of it but Regulus had kept track of how many times his cousins had tried to kill him.

Narcissa and Andromeda had both tried to kill him once, jointly. It had largely been an accident but he hadn't been able to keep from tensing up around them for months afterward.

(It had involved his broom, a cat, three oranges, a bold lie, and a simple misplacement of his right foot on the back terrace of Grimmauld Place.)

Bellatrix on the other hand...

She had tried to kill him each year since he had gained his wand, cursing the stairs beneath his feet, the walls at his sides, over and over until his shield was merely a thought away and his wand was never far from his hand.

And though it burned deeply, with a sort of hard and low ache, he knew he would not be the man he was, would not be nearly as clever or as quick without her.

She had become the figures of his nightmares far before she killed in front of him, long before she contorted herself to the perversions of the Dark Lord.

She claimed, when she was caught, that she was doing it to strengthen the Black line. That she was making him prove himself, as though she knew the weight of the Black pedigree alone.

+++

Regulus never let himself think boldly in front of Bellatrix. He never let himself think, period.

He kept himself quiet and simple and quick but a desperate _there-is-no-other-choice-survive-or-die_ sort of quick.

And the day before he died, he wrote out every single awful thought he had had about her and left it on his desk, in clear view.

+++

Even in his hallucinations with the poison, she never appeared.

+++

He felt, halfway through the Spring Term of his Third Year, that he almost had made a person of his muggleborn.

They had not spoken, instead mutely offering each other their notes to swap and communicating through glances and eyebrow twitches.

He had noticed though, that she was following his lead, copying his grip on her quills instead of her original ghastly fist, knotting her tie in the correct way, rather than the sloppy muggle way.

He felt, almost _proud,_ of ~~what~~ who she had become.

What he had not realized, but she had, in her quiet and clever way, was that he had changed too. He didn't sneer at his classmates nearly as much as he had, he was far more likely to hold his tongue than engage, and, most importantly, mudblood had slowly been slipping from his vocabulary.

She knew they had not spoken. She knew that they probably wouldn't reunite the next year. But, she also knew, that she had done something far more important than her schoolwork.

She had become human.

+++

That was the most important lesson that she could teach. ((even though it shouldn't have been her burden to bear))

+++

Sometimes, (rarely- _very_ rarely), Regulus forgot that those he lived within his Slytherin dorm had not experienced the same teachings as he had.

They had not suffered through the same beatings, learned the same lessons, followed the same path. They had not been endlessly proclaimed to be the saving grace of a whole family while also being berated for existence.

Heavy lies the crown, Regulus knew.

But heavier lies loneliness, settled in his bones as though it was iron manacles, and so, sometimes, rarely, Regulus slipped up.

He fell too quiet, laughed at the wrong sort of joke, agreed with the wrong sort of sentiment. It was something he eventually trained out of himself but for a few years, in the small awful moments, he was able to wonder at who he would've been able to be _without_ the Black name.

+++

By the time Regulus had graduated and become branded, he was endlessly good at the lingering type of flattery that older purebloods and the Dark Lord adored.

He was good at it, in the same way Bellatrix was good at torture.

It was a shield of its own, a way of keeping the attention off him, onto others without forcing his hand.

The name Black echoed through the Ministry the way a battering ram broke through sturdy oak walls - suddenly in a great cacophony of sound before splintering off and piercing everything.

It was prestigious and cold and a true testament to wizard-kind.

It was power.

+++

((it wasn't enough))

+++

Regulus Black was a true son of Black. Vicious and steady and good at the insidious flattery that men sought to emulate in all walks of life - but especially around the Dark Lord.

It was left unsaid for almost two decades too that he was a son of Black in another way.

In his unyielding spine and his brilliant eyes and his steady deduction and his eventual correction of a mistake made too late in life.

+++

When he died Regulus was his own man, under no obligation to either leader and doing what he could to make things right.

He was alone.

But he did it - one small chip away at the Dark Lord's power, one small wave lapping at a rocky cliff, the shifting of a stone against the others, making a path for the whole cliffside to come crashing down.

It was him. And even though it wasn't anything in the moment - decades later - he had done enough, and that small shift - changed the world.

Such was the nature of the Black family. Power seekers, vicious duelers, and true to themselves, no matter what, to the cold and bitter end.

**Author's Note:**

> I've come into absolutely adoring Regulus and I have been seeking out and devouring so many fanfics featuring him and - yeah - the Black family is insane. 
> 
> If you liked this weird little character sketch, let me know! Thanks for reading!


End file.
